


Mother, Remember

by HardGarbage



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Non-Linear Narrative, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Set Pre-Overwatch Recall, Slice of Life, Young Jesse McCree, not necessarily happy slices tho lol
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-19
Updated: 2016-09-19
Packaged: 2018-08-15 21:23:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8073172
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HardGarbage/pseuds/HardGarbage
Summary: Refrains from moments in the beloved and bloody life of Jesse McCree. Each chapter is framed by lyrics from Upward Over the Mountain by Iron & Wine.





	

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Interlude I_
> 
> The slow day after a restless night, what he is when no one's around. The charm that he exudes despite himself: a mighty smile, a laugh. The person he is for others, and for himself.
> 
> Word Count: 1013

It was dark in his room, soft and hazy with morning, with lingering cigar smoke, with the focus he couldn’t quite pull together after a sleepless night.  _ He _ felt soft, too. Blurred at the edges. In the darkness he was just another object, a thing which occupied space, and if he didn’t move, if he breathed real shallow, if he settled his eyes on a middle-distance which did not exist, he could almost believe he wasn’t there at all. As it was, his ass itched.

He took care of it, blew another plume of smoke into the already stifled air, looked at the clock winking blue above his door. 0523. He could get up now, if he wanted. It wouldn’t look too strange, wouldn’t prompt a worried look from Angie or anything. He could go make some coffee, catch the sunrise, find himself in an early morning chat with Amari. He could.

His eyes made patterns out of the dark, like a low-res image. What should have been the smooth gradient of soft blue light from the clock into the purple nothingness in the far corner became swatches, here more mauve, here slightly green, here a color too filled with other colors to describe. He wasn’t sure where the differences came from, how the light divided itself like that. Turning his head, his beige desk was the same color as the black shirt crumpled next to it. The silhouette of his hat disappeared into the shadow of a deep shelf. The hand resting on his chest could have been anyone’s. 

It was only his, though, just like the hand pulling the cigar from his mouth was his. The hair which fell into his face when he shifted upright, the boots he knocked over as he swung his feet onto the floor, the sigh which came out of him softly, reluctantly: these were all his, too. He sat there, staring at the floor. He had his elbows to his knees, shoulders bowed, head hung between them. Smoke continued to drift up and into his face from where the cigar hung loose in his right hand. 

He felt the room dwarf him, saw himself as though from a great distance—a solitary figure in an empty field—saw how the empty space of this room was so much larger than him hunched within it, saw himself disappear as a spec of detail in a vast landscape, or a low-res image which dropped him off as a pattern of grey in a room of grey.

He turned on the lights and everything shattered into clarity.

 

* * *

 

If he had been watching himself, he would have been pleased. His smile was broad, his laugh hearty, his jibes light and playful. If he had been watching himself, he would have seen how he filled the roles assigned to him, some good and warm—brother, friend, comrade, confidant, relief—some less so—joke, child, inferior, idiot, distraction. Still, his smile broad, his laugh hearty. He had been there long enough to know who he was supposed to be, knew how to live up to expectations, knew how to fall into a role and keep it, to hang on for dear life and forget whatever parts of him hid when he was busy being something else for someone else. For him, too. It kept him busy.

It was like this everyday, remembering a role and being a part of it, but he was having trouble sleeping. He didn’t have to be anything when he was alone. He  _ wasn’t _ anything, when he was alone. 

As it was, he was playing checkers with Fareeha. She had wanted to play chess, but he’d chuckled and apologized, saying that game was a mite too smart for him, and suggested its less mentally-challenging cousin instead. He couldn’t tell if he was letting her win or if she was just very, very good. He liked watching her play, her small, intense face, the way she loomed over the board like a hawk on prey, the fierce pride of her victories, and the surprisingly enthusiastic compliments at her losses. 

He also liked the way she drank glass after glass of water, like she couldn’t get enough of it, and each time she emptied one she’d take both their glasses (whether his was fully empty or not) and refill them. Fareeha may single-handedly have kept him hydrated for quite a long while. He wondered if she was doing it on purpose. She had chided him before for being so unhealthy, and considered it a personal shortcoming that she had not gotten him to give up smoking yet. She chided him for a lot of things, despite her age. Whenever he thought of her he always thought  _ mi hermana _ , though he’d only said it outloud once, to Fareeha’s confusion and his own embarrassment. 

An hour and a few games in, after he’d had yet another loss (though he’d won the  _ last _ round), and gone through two and a half glasses of water, Amari came to retrieve her daughter. She was clean and stately after a day of desk work and he marveled at how ordinary she could look—hat tucked under her arm, jacket unbuttoned, smiling at her daughter’s small hand held loose in her own—especially when he’d seen, could remember vividly, was remembering already, her covered in dirt and rubble, bleeding from the head, her with sweat stains under her arms, barking orders over a wounded soldier, her with that rifle in her hands staring down the scope, still as a pillar, still as death.

She waved Fareeha out of the room and stepped toward him. He looked up at her, realizing too late that he should already have been standing. Before he could startle upwards, she put a hand on his shoulder.

“You look tired, child.”

She looked down at him, not concerned, not accusing, just factual, an observation, a truth.

She doesn’t say anything else. Doesn’t offer advice or admonishment. She lifted her hand from his shoulder and left the room empty, with him inside it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A few notes about how this fic will (hopefully) develop:
> 
> The character and additional tags will change/get added to as the fic goes on, largely because I'm not sure exactly who all is going to be involved, or what exactly is going to happen (the archive warning is almost guaranteed to change tho, tbh). I have a rough outline of all the chapters but, for instance, I hadn't originally intended for the Amari family to show up in this chapter and yet?? Here they are?? Anyway. 
> 
> This chapter is relatively short and sweet, but I know for a fact there are going to be some long-ass chapters. Chapter length will be determined by the needs of the story more than anything else. I'm planning on putting the word-count, tags, and summaries which apply specifically to that chapter in notes at the top of each chapter. Hopefully that will clear things up for people.
> 
> I will be including the lyrics each chapter is based on. This one (as a few others will be) is titled "Interlude" because it is representative of the instrumental intro to the song.
> 
> This fic is going to be completely Gen throughout. I'm not building up to any pairing. I just wanted to write a bunch of stuff about Jesse tbh lol.
> 
> I think that's it?? This is the first fic I've written like this (i.e. long and already outlined) so I hope it goes well. I know I'm starting out real slow here, but I promise there will definitely be some more action-packed and suspenseful chapters. Justing warming up.
> 
> I hope you enjoy it!


End file.
